you're my head start
by flowermasters
Summary: Steve wakes up a father. Things are complicated.


A/N: Well, I missed Father's Day by a bit here, but have this anyways. This basically operates as an AU if we assume Steve and Peggy never did the deed.

Warnings for: a little bit of angst.

Title comes from 'Gone Gone Gone' by Phillip Phillips.

* * *

In the stack of files Steve is given after the ice - so he can 'catch up', he's told, but he's not stupid; he knows these files are meant to pressure him to get his grieving out of the way as quickly as possible - one name is unfamiliar. Right between _Carter, Margaret_ (he saves her file for last, of course) and _Dernier, Jacques _in the alphabetized stack is _Carter, Vivian_. Before opening the file, Steve assumes - thanks to the shared surname - that it must be a relative of Peggy's. But she'd never mentioned having a sister - only a baby brother - and anyway, Steve isn't sure why it's relevant to him. That is, of course, until he opens the file.

He skims the paper within. The information lists Vivian's date of birth at the end of 1945, and her place of birth as New York City. Blonde hair, blue eyes, no known health problems or identifiable markings. Finally, Steve's gaze flicks to the picture.

Steve studies the picture for a few moments, his thoughts turning sluggish as he puts two and two together. She's a beautiful girl - or she had been at one point, as the picture isn't recent. Her hair is a muted shade of blonde, not unlike Steve's, and her eyes are a crisp, clear blue. _Very much _like Steve's. In fact, she looks a hell of a lot like him, only thinner and softer. There are also traces of someone else in the curve of her painted lips, the steely quality of her expression. That look smacks of Peggy.

He just sits there, staring directly into the eyes of Vivian Carter. Vivian Carter, born less than nine months after Steve put that plane in the water. Vivian Carter, whose paperwork goes on to report that her living family members include a mother - _Margaret Carter _- and a couple of half-siblings. There is no father listed, but Steve's already figured out why that is.

He's not sure how to react. He's not sure that there _is_ a proper way to react in this situation. There are plenty of tales, of course, of men returning from war or from a long trip to find out that in their absence, they've become fathers. He doesn't think those stories will be of any use to him, because it's simply not possible to come home and find out that you have a child who's around forty years older than you are. Not possible until now, of course.

There's a phone number listed for Vivian - _Viv_, according to the nickname printed under her picture - but Steve shuts the folder before he can work up the gumption to call. He does the same with Peggy's, too, once he finally forces himself to open up her file. He stares at her picture for a long time before closing it, swallowing grief and confusion and bitterness despite the fact that he can break without fear here - there's no one around to see him fall apart.

Steve doesn't call either of them, even though he knows he could. He just can't bring himself to do it. Part of it is pure selfishness - it hurts too much at first to think of Peggy, let alone to actually speak to her or visit her. The other part is an attempt at being respectful. Peggy's old now. A grandmother, possibly a great-grandmother. She's moved on with her life several times over by now, and what right does he have to bother her, and possibly awaken painful and long buried memories? And as for her daughter (_his daughter _still doesn't sound right, not yet) - how can he grieve for or miss someone he'd never known? Besides, she'd most likely been raised by Peggy and another man, the father of her half-siblings, and that - well, that thought stings too much if he lets himself dwell on it.

So he throws himself into work, and training, and fighting. His body is designed for those things, and it doesn't fail him now. He tries to keep his mind focused on anything other than what's really hurting him, and is sort of successful. Sometimes.

But after the battle of Manhattan, his self-imposed waiting game is over. His phone rings late in the evening, and he answers without hesitation. He assumes it's a S.H.I.E.L.D agent calling - Hill, maybe, or Fury if something's seriously up - and well, he's not entirely wrong.

"Hello?" he says, and on the other end of the line, someone sucks in a sharp breath.

"Steve," a quavering voice says, and Steve swallows hard.

There's a very long pause, the silence broken only by the sound of a car alarm going off outside Steve's apartment and Peggy's soft, trembling breaths crackling over the line. Finally, he says, "I guess I should have called sooner."

When she speaks, he can almost _hear_ the teary smile on her face, and his heart aches so badly he thinks he might die, right then and there. "Don't worry," she says. "I figured I had to take charge, since you're always running a bit late."

_That's my girl_, he thinks rather helplessly, and a second later he's crying like a baby while Peggy murmurs soothing nonsense in his ear from miles and miles away.

When they finally hang up well over an hour later, Peggy sounds exhausted and old and frail and all the things Steve doesn't want to see her as. But nevertheless, she informs him that he's to visit her as soon as possible, and he agrees. He'd thought of staying away as the respectful choice, but if Peggy wants him to visit, he can't possibly deny her that.

He visits Peggy around two weeks later, and as expected, everything hurts a whole hell of a lot. Nothing hurts worse than realizing that she's still the most incredible woman he's ever known.

For a while, they just talk. The battle is a safe place to start, because Peggy - with her soldier's heart and military nature - is interested and Steve can talk about it in clinical, professional terms. But gradually, his attention shifts to the pictures on her walls and bedside table. Unsurprisingly, Vivian's face appears frequently, in pictures both recent and old. He notes that even in the most recent pictures, she looks much younger than her years. If he needed any more proof of her parentage, the fact that she bears the effects of the serum would certainly do.

Peggy isn't as sharp as she'd once been - dementia, he's been told, plus the simple effects of aging - but she's still more perceptive than anyone he's ever known. "Who told you?" she asks, her tone delicate.

"Told me what?" Steve asks, his gaze flicking back to her face. She smiles.

"Oh, don't play stupid. It doesn't suit you."

"Sorry," he says, voice heavy. He pauses, then finally says, "They gave me her file. I put the pieces together myself."

"I told you stupidity doesn't suit you," Peggy says, and Steve almost smiles.

There's a pause while Steve's gaze drifts back to one of the pictures. It's in a frame, but bears the visible effects of age. Vivian is an infant in Peggy's arms, her face blurred by the grainy quality of the picture. "So," Steve says. "One night was all it took, huh?"

"That's typically the case, yes," Peggy says dryly.

"You know what I mean," Steve fires back.

"Yes, I do," she says, and it's her turn to sigh. "It was a stroke of luck. Good or bad, depending on your perspective."

Steve hesitates. "What's your perspective on it?"

The look in Peggy's eyes grows distant for a moment, and Steve almost starts to worry - he'd been informed by her nurse that Peggy drifts on occasion, back to places and people long gone, and that she sometimes forgets things only moments after they happen - but she focuses again a second later. "I thought myself supremely unfortunate, at first. You know how it was in those days. Pregnant out of wedlock - I was in a real fix."

'Those days' don't feel long ago at all to Steve, but he understands what she means. People aren't so quick to judge about that sort of thing nowadays. Steve vastly prefers the newer mindset to the one he'd left behind. "It didn't help that I was grieving," Peggy continues, and Steve swallows around a sudden rush of guilt and sadness. "I resented it. There I was with your baby but without you. It was awful, at first."

"I'm sorry," Steve says, his voice cracking slightly. Peggy glances over at him with tears clinging to her eyelashes.

"Don't be," she says. "It's not like you were in a position to do anything." She gives him a sad smile. "You would have marched me down to the nearest chapel the second I told you, I know it."

"Probably," he admits wryly.

There's another pause, and then Peggy says, "I did get over it, though. I loved her the moment I saw her. She looks so much like you, you know."

"I noticed," Steve says. "But she looks like you, too. She looks like she doesn't stand for any nonsense."

"She doesn't," Peggy says, and Steve actually does smile, just a little bit. After a moment, she abruptly says, "I wanted to name her Rogers, by the way. But I couldn't. I didn't want a life of constant scrutiny for her."

Steve nods. It would have been different if Steve had been around to claim her as his, but with him presumed dead, Peggy and the baby would have been under a microscope. Literally, in Vivian's case, since her blood would hold fifty percent of what had been done to Steve during the war. "Who knew?" he asks, more out of curiosity than anything. "Besides you, of course."

"I suppose if you ended up with her file then somewhere along the way, someone figured it out, but it's no skin off my nose now. I only ever told Howard, though," she says. "Colonel Phillips asked me outright when he found out that I was pregnant. I never told the Commandos in as many words, but they knew. They kept her under the radar for me - made sure that no one came snooping."

Howard, the colonel, the Howling Commandos - all of them gone. Steve's not sure what hurts worse - the knowledge that they're dead, or the idea that they all died thinking he'd be waiting for them on the other side. But he feels slightly better knowing that they'd all come together to protect Peggy and Vivian, although he wouldn't have expected any different from them. They were stand-up guys, every last one of them.

"Vivian knows," Peggy says, for once oblivious to where Steve's thoughts truly are. "In case you were wondering. I never kept it from her."

"I figured," Steve says. Peggy's an honest person, almost ruthlessly so at times - and at any rate, the pieces wouldn't have been difficult for Vivian to put together if she's half as smart as Peggy is. His face must have been plastered all over her history textbooks, and it isn't hard to see the resemblance between the two of them. Add that to the fact that she's no doubt always been stronger and faster than anyone else of her size and weight, and it's almost glaringly obvious. What's a bit harder to guess is how she must have reacted to that knowledge.

"How did she . . . feel about it?" Steve asks hesitantly, not sure if he really wants to know the answer.

"She was surprised, at first, but not unhappy," Peggy says. "She was only eleven when I told her - although she always knew my husband wasn't her father. In time, I think she was proud. She knew you died a hero."

Steve wants to say _but_ _I didn't die _- but in the eyes of just about everybody, he did. There's no use arguing a point that's nearly seventy years old. "That's good, I guess," he says, rather lamely.

"You could give her a call, you know," Peggy suggests. "She wouldn't mind."

"I'll think about it," is the best Steve can do, and even that sounds rather weak. Peggy, bless her, doesn't push it. All she does is reach for his hand, new tears gracing her eyes.

"Oh, Steve," she says. "I do wish you could have been there. You would have made such a good father." She reaches up with her free hand to wipe at her eyes. "You still can, of course. But Viv would have _adored_ you."

But that's precisely why Steve isn't sure he'll ever be ready to talk to Vivian. She's yet another reminder of what he _could_ have had. He could have taken her to baseball games, or bought her ice cream cones, or seen her off to a high school dance. But for all intents and purposes, he's not her father. Some other man had stepped in to fill that role, and while Steve can't begrudge her that, it will certainly make things awkward. And all of that isn't even taking into consideration the fact that she's a grown woman - an _elderly_ woman, by most standards. Steve could be her son, age-wise. And hell, who knows if she'd even want to meet him. She might be proud to be the biological daughter of Captain America, but what about the daughter of plain old Steve Rogers? That's anybody's guess.

Steve keeps visiting Peggy, and it does get less difficult over time. The whole situation with S.H.I.E.L.D and HYDRA and _Bucky_ is another in a long series of blows to Steve's heart, but he's learning to deal. It's all he can do, really. It's like Peggy says - _all we can do is our best_. He's got to do his best, and he does.

He gets the call about a month and a half after the not-quite-collapse of S.H.I.E.L.D. It's an unfamiliar number, and when he answers, an equally unfamiliar voice greets him. "Hello, Captain," a woman says, crisp and calm, if a bit rushed. "This is Peggy Carter's daughter -,"

Steve's heart drops to his shoes immediately. This is _the call_, isn't it? This is one of Peggy's children, calling to inform him that she's gone. "Is she - is Peggy alright?" he asks immediately, cutting the woman off without a second thought.

"Oh, yes," Peggy's daughter says hastily. "She's fine. Healthy as can be at her age."

"Oh," Steve says mildly, simultaneously incredibly relieved and totally embarrassed. "I'm sorry, I just . . . I worry about her."

"Understandable," the woman says. "At any rate, I'm Vivian. I don't know if the name means anything to you, but . . ." At this point, she falters, uncertainty leaking into her tone. Steve empathizes.

"I know who you are," he says quietly, and she lets out a soft huff.

"Oh, good," she says, relieved. "Mom wouldn't tell me if you knew or not."

As gobsmacked as he is right now - he's _actually_ talking to someone he helped to create nearly _seventy _years ago - Steve can't help but be confused by that. "Why not?"

"She's protecting you," Vivian explains. "She says you're dealing with a lot and I shouldn't push anything. She wouldn't even give me your phone number - I finally just stole her address book and looked you up. I figured given your line of work, I needed to seize my chance to talk to you - before you end up in the Potomac again, or something like it."

It's not an unreasonable thought, Steve supposes. Vivian continues, "So I hope I'm not _pushing anything. _I've just been . . . _waiting_, ever since they found you."

Steve can't help but feel a little guilty about that. He's been the one holding off, after all. It's been years and he's never made an effort to contact her. No wonder she got impatient. Steve would have felt the same. "It's alright," he says finally. "I understand. I should have called, or wrote, or something . . . but I didn't know if that was the appropriate thing to do."

"Guess it's a good thing I did it for you, then," Vivian says briskly, and she reminds him so much of Peggy in that instant that he actually, honest-to-God grins.

They arrange for him to give her a call next time he's in the New York area - he can't promise her when that will be (mostly because it's entirely up to Bucky where Steve goes) but he can promise to call her so they can meet up. He's still not entirely sure he's comfortable with it - or that he ever will be - but it's just like with Peggy; Vivian wants to do this, and Steve can't turn her down. He owes her this much, at least.

So that's how Steve ends up in a small cafe in Manhattan a month later, drumming his fingers on the table absently and waiting. He kind of wishes he had Sam along for company - just to dull his nerves - but Sam had solidly vetoed Steve's offer to come (he had, however, requested that Steve bring him back a cappuccino.) They don't have anywhere pressing to be, given that Bucky is probably long gone from the city by now, but Steve won't keep Sam waiting for long. At least, he hopes he won't.

Steve's gaze flicks to the door every time it opens, but he still sucks in a breath of surprise when Vivian breezes in. It's a lot different seeing her in the flesh instead of in photographs. She's shorter than he'd expected - her build seems to come from Peggy. However, she moves with a certain fluidity that's entirely out of place for someone her age. Then again, she doesn't even _look_ her age. It's strange all around.

Her eyes land on him almost immediately. A faint smile crosses her face, and then she walks over. Steve rises to his feet automatically, even though he's not exactly sure how to play this. He decides to let Vivian do most of the leading - the Carter women seem to be particularly good at guiding him when he falters. "Captain," she greets him as she reaches his table.

"Call me Steve," he says immediately.

"Only if you call me Viv," she returns, and he nods. Before he gets a chance to do anything else, she extends a hand for him to shake. "If all goes well, we can hug before you leave. But a handshake seems like a good place to start, doesn't it?"

"Alright," Steve says, and shakes her hand. She's got a firm grip, deceptively strong. He's not surprised.

They sit down, and for a moment, Vivian just looks at him. Steve can feel himself blushing under the scrutiny, but he doesn't know what to say to break the tension. After all, what do you say to someone who only knows you as their (supposedly) long-dead biological father? Steve doesn't think 'sorry I kicked the bucket a week after your conception' is going to help much.

"So," Vivian finally says. "Captain America in the flesh. You're less imposing than I expected."

". . . I'm sorry," Steve says hesitantly, and she shakes her head, her neatly coiffed blonde hair bobbing around her face.

"It's not a bad thing," she says. "You're very . . . normal."

"Thank you?" Steve tries, and she chuckles. Some of the tension dissipates, and Steve feels himself relax ever so slightly.

"It's just - I don't know, I always pictured you as very stiff," Vivian elaborates. "In every picture of you that I ever saw growing up, you seemed so big and, well, serious. My mother told me that wasn't the case, but I never really believed her."

"How's she doing?" Steve asks. "Your mother." He hasn't had a chance to visit Peggy in a while, what with the ongoing hunt for Bucky, and it's been eating at him. He knows very well that he doesn't have much time left with her. She's not like him, or Vivian - she's got a ticking clock just like every other human.

"Fine," Vivian says. "As good as can be, really."

"Good," Steve says, more than a bit relieved. "That's good."

Vivian smiles slightly. "I think it's very nice of you to visit her so often, by the way," she says. "I know it must be . . . strange."

"It is, sometimes," Steve admits. He decides not to point out that he might never have visited if Peggy hadn't insisted on it. Looking back, he can't believe he ever thought that staying away from her had been the right plan. He's already lost far too much time, after all. "But she's still my - she's still Peggy."

Vivian catches the hitch in his speech, and her smile turns sympathetic. "You really loved her, didn't you?"

Steve's next words slip out before he can stop himself. "I still do."

Vivian glances away briefly, before finally meeting his gaze again. There's a warmth in her eyes - more gentle than Peggy's particular brand of caring but similar nonetheless. "Well, if it makes you feel any better," she says, "I know she always loved you."

Steve hesitates. "I'm sure she loved your - your stepfather," he says awkwardly, and Vivian nods.

"Oh, she did," Vivian says. "But I could see it in her eyes when she told me about you. I was, what, eleven, when she told me everything? But I could see the sadness in her. She never stopped mourning you."

Steve swallows hard. The idea of Peggy, silently grieving for him all those years, is hard to bear, but he manages. Those words come back to him - _all we can do is our best _- and he knows that's what Peggy did. He's proud of her, he realizes abruptly. So proud of her. She brought Vivian into the world and raised her right, even though Steve should have been there to help her and couldn't be. Peggy did a damn good job, all things considered.

With that thought in mind, Steve knows what he needs to say. "Look," he says abruptly, before he loses his nerve. "I just wanted to say that - I'm sorry. I'm really sorry I couldn't be there. Believe me, if I could have been, Viv, I would have. I would have been there for everything. But I know you didn't lack for anything, and I'm glad."

Vivian smiles. "I didn't lack for anything, you're right," she says. "But _I'm_ glad that they found you. It's not the best of circumstances, but I'm glad I got to meet you at least once."

Steve bites his lip, and then asks the question that's been burning in him for a while now. "Peggy told me that she thought you felt proud as a kid - to be my daughter, I mean. Is that true?"

Vivian's gaze doesn't falter. "Yes," she says. "I still do."

Talking becomes easier after that. Vivian tells him about her life - her childhood, how she'd been a S.H.I.E.L.D agent for nearly thirty years before finally retiring, how much she likes to listen to her mother's old stories (some of which, in fact, feature Steve.) She's also incredibly interested in hearing Steve talk - about Peggy, Bucky, the Avengers, everything. He gets more off his chest with her than he has in a long while. Perhaps it's the pieces of Peggy he sees in her (or maybe it's the bits of himself, because they are there), but Steve finds that he really likes talking to her. It's not the best of circumstances, and it'll never make up for the decades he's missed, but it's better than nothing.

And when all is said and done, they _do_ hug before they part ways.


End file.
